Furniture can be found in virtually every home, business, office, and many outdoor settings. Furniture performs a variety of useful functions such as providing seating places and surfaces for placing items thereon. Some furniture is designed and constructed for one person to use. For example, a single chair is intended to comfortably support the weight and form of one person. Other types of furniture are compatible with multiple users. A sofa or sectional will easily accommodate more than one person.
When the end user, e.g., homeowner or business owner, is planning for the purchase and placement of furniture in their particular environment, many factors are carefully considered such as function, usage, style, price, etc. Assume the end user is planning a backyard furniture arrangement for entertaining and relaxing. The user may decide on an outdoor dining table and set of 4-6 individual chairs around the table. In addition, the user may want a few chase lounges, recliners, and rockers with ottomans, as well as some coffee tables and end tables. Each piece of furniture has a specific dedicated purpose and generally cannot be interchanged for another function.
Consider the case of the outdoor dining table and chair set. The outdoor dining set is intended to stay together and provide a table surface for food and entertaining and chairs for seating around the table. To pull one or more chairs away from the outdoor dining set, for another long term and entirely different purpose, separate from the dining set, is considered undesirable and poor form to many users. Likewise, the idea of moving just the table to another location for an extended period of time is equally rejected by many users. Most outdoor furniture has a single functional purpose and usually stays with that purpose over its useful service life.
With the single mindset of maintaining dedicated pieces of furniture, the user must plan and purchase additional furniture units for each specific use and setting. The user may have some furniture pieces for the patio, other furniture pieces around the outdoor fire pit, still other furniture positioned around the pool, and so on. Some pieces are designed and constructed for one person to use; other pieces are built for multiple users. The single dedicated-purpose furniture adds significant cost to the task of furnishing the home, office, or outdoor setting. The user needs many different pieces to cover all intended uses. Many times certain dedicated pieces are rarely used, but nonetheless remain in their assigned location just in case the need arises.
A need exists for furniture which can have multiple uses in a variety of configurations and situations.